The White Man Has A Need To Degrade Human Beings

From observing the present and historic activities of white men the author says that they appear inherently deficient in loving behaviors and appear to enjoy degrading people hence are probably sadistic. The essay wonders how to teach white folks love? It speculates that perhaps being loving persons is the only way to model love for other persons; for white folks to become loving they must see and learn from loving persons in their world.

I did not have business that took me to American courts until I was going through divorce hence did not know much about America's jurisprudence. During my divorce proceedings, I sat in the court room and a whole bunch of prisoners, in prison jumpers, chains on their arms, waists and legs, were dragged into the courtroom by their prison guards. I could not believe what I was looking at: human beings in chains! And what were their crimes? This was family court after all thus their crimes ranged from not paying child support to domestic issues. For not paying child support folks were put in chains and dragged to court? I could not believe it.

I left the court thinking about the humiliation of those prisoners. I took it personally for I could see myself in their shoes. Their humiliation is my humiliation. Thus, I began thinking whether the white man enjoys humiliating people? Is there something about him that makes him want to humiliate other human beings, after all he was just done enslaving black men and currently humiliates them by discriminating against them?

If you have ever dealt with white policemen you probably would have noticed how their first duty is to ask you to hands up, spread your legs (sometimes for you to lay on the ground) as they search you...they want to humiliate you, reduce you to the status of a thing, take away your human dignity. Why is it that the white man cannot stay away from degrading his fellow human beings; does he enjoy doing so, and if so why?

In this essay I grapple with the subject of white man's sadism. The subject lends itself to speculation thus the essay is speculative. Make of it what you like.

Somehow I have come to the conclusion that the white man has a deep rooted spiritual sickness, a sickness that disposes him to enjoy humiliating people rather than seeking ways to make their lives lovely. I believe that he is sadistic in nature.

I certainly cannot imagine a situation where I would place fellow human beings in chains just because they owed child support! And while we are on the subject of child support who gave a society that refuses to care for children the moral right to pretend to protect children by jailing their fathers for not supporting them. White American society has no right to even get involved in the child support business unless it is going to get involved in taking care of children. Supporting children means that society should pay for child care centers for all children from age one to six; pay for elementary, secondary and university education for all children; and provide all children with publicly paid health insurance.

There is a psychological state whereby some persons actually derive pleasure from seeing other persons suffer pain; these types of persons generally have less developed social conscience and do not feel wrong taking what does not belong them; they do not feel guilty or remorse from transgressing the rights of other persons; indeed, they enjoy harming or killing other persons. Psychiatry calls them anti-social personalities or sociopaths or psychopaths; they fill our jails.

I have come to the conclusion that white men in varying degrees suffer from a form of this mental illness for otherwise their history would not be full of instances where they engaged in degrading people as in enslaving human beings (and rationalizing their inhumane behavior with the various racist claptrap that black folks are inferior to them, that Asians are inferior etc.). There must be something fundamentally wrong with white men for them to engage in the type of sick behaviors they do.

Before I proceed let me say that I am aware that it is possible for an individual to see a trait in him, does not like it, deny it and project it to other persons. That is, one can project what one sees in one to other persons and accuse them of being what one thinks that one is or in fact is. I have asked myself whether I am projecting what I suspect is in me to white folks. The categorical answer is no. I cannot imagine under what circumstances I would do what white folks do, degrade people. I would rather die than humiliate other human beings and make them suffer pain and deprivation.

Another psychological point is the fact that there are people who fear degradation and humiliation. Some folks fear being demeaned. To fear being degraded one must first feel degraded, deny it and posit false dignity for ones self and then fear the lowering of that false, exalted self. According to Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, in neurosis the individual feels inferior, denies it and compensates with pursuit of false superiority, imaginary worth, meaning and purpose; according to Karen Horney's Psychoanalysis the neurotic seeks fictive ideal, perfect self and that false self then fears other persons not seeing it as perfect and feels angry at those it images are degrading it. In paranoid personality disorder the individual feels inadequate and restitutes with false sense if important self and wants other people to treat him as that imaginary big self and if they do not he feels demeaned and angry at them.

Does this psychological process operate in me? Perhaps, up to a point it does but the relevant point is that the white man degrades people and that is the point of discussion, not abstract psychology that may or may not be true.

I have an intuitive understanding that what human beings need most in their lives is love. Love nurtures people and makes them thrive. In loving situations people feel happy and peaceful. If you want to produce a happy people you love them.

I see love as the most important factor in our lives. Therefore, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I would deprive human beings of love, such as I see white folks do all the time when they cause other persons pain (be it in slavery, racial discrimination, economic injustices such as structuring a society where only a few have most of the money and the majority live in poverty).

It seems self-evident to me that a healthy person and people must be aware that due to the conditions of being, such as diseases, poverty and death human beings already suffer enough and therefore we ought to seek ways to make them happy.

Of course there are bad persons. There are criminals who could harm or even kill people. One is not a naive idealist who does not see that people come in different guises and that some engage in criminal activities. Therefore, one has no problem with trying and jailing criminals. But having jailed them one insists that they be re-socialized, taught to love themselves and love other persons. This is not misguided idealism, it is rooted in realism for those who tend to engage in anti-social behaviors tend to be people who were not loved and therefore hate other persons for not loving them.

In fact, I believe that one of the reasons why white folks engage in their mass antisocial behaviors, their unloving behaviors is because they were not loved and therefore hate themselves and hate other persons for not loving them. If they were loved they would probably learn to love themselves and love all people instead of seeking ways to inflict pain and suffering on people.

There may also be existential reasons why human beings do not love their fellow human beings. As I pointed out in more metaphysical essays I believe that at root we are spirit and that spirit is love. Our true nature is love but somehow we decided to experience the opposite of love, to separate from love hence live in an unloving world.

Love is union; love is God and heaven. Love is eternal. We chose to separate from unified state, from God, from love, from eternity and to experience their opposites in ego state, lovelessness, and mortality. The world is the opposite of God, the opposite of love.

I believe that human beings in general engage in behaviors that lack love because that is what this world is for and it is what they came here to experience. In that light members of other races, blacks and Asians are also lacking in loving behaviors and engage in anti-social behaviors (it is not only white folk who are sociopaths).

However, while here on earth some human beings remember love and mitigate their loveless acts with some attenuated love for all persons. Jesus was a man who remembered that our nature is love and chose to love himself and all human beings. In loving all persons and their creator, God, he jettisoned his identification with the separated ego self, the hateful self and thus returned to the awareness of his partship in God, to Christ.

Somehow white men appear to completely forget the nature of love and the utility of love and behave as the opposite of love hence seek sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain and suffering to human beings.

We have to find a way to teach white folk to remember that our nature is love and get them to love themselves and love all people. When they do, and when all of us love one another we produce a peaceful and happy world. As long as we do not love one another we shall have a conflicted world, the hell we currently live in. The white man's world is an unloving world, a hellish world and this has to change.

What does it gain a man to own the whole world and live a miserable existence? Love for all is what makes our existence pleasant. We must find a way to heal those with a sadistic tendency of this malady and replace it with love.

Love is really what heals all of us of our mental disorders. All the psychiatric medications of this world would not heal anti-social personalities; what will heal them is for them to love themselves and love all people and show that love by working for our mutual good, our social interests.

So, how exactly do we go about teaching white folk to love? This is a good question.

Years ago I learned a crucial lesson; that lesson is that people are at different levels of spiritual evolution; people have different understanding of love. Therefore, I learned not to moralize about love or criticize people for not being loving. I learned that people actually believe that they love when their actions do not love. They are in fact doing their best when they say that they love even as their actions prove the opposite of love.

Therefore, instead of engaging in abstract philosophizing about love, preaching about love or criticizing people for not being loving, the best way to teach them to love is to love them. We teach love by example. If we love and model loving behaviors those who do not love would learn from us. Thus, instead to telling white folk to love we should model loving behaviors for them to learn from.

At present white folk do not know what love is (they equate love with erotic love or admiration of their bodies). Yes, folks ought to accept their bodies but that is animal kind of love, a very basic level of love.

Real love means accepting the person, body, mind and spirit; looking at a person and seeing his imperfections, we all are imperfect, and still accepting him.

(Generally, if you do not admire women's bodies and tell them that you love their bodies, if you criticize them they will see you as an abuser; women almost completely identify with their bodies and see their bodies as who they are that you must affirm women's vanity by telling them that they are gorgeous...if you do not affirm the goodness of their bodies, since they primarily see themselves as bodies they get depressed. If you are not going to admire women and tell them that you love them it is necessary that you stay away from them altogether; you do not engage in abstract talk about love with a woman; you love her body and everything else or leave her alone but for heaven's sake never criticize a woman!)

For our present purpose we must love white folks and from doing so maybe they would learn the true meaning of love, and stop seeking ways to humiliate their fellow human beings and instead love them and treat them respectfully. Instead of placing folks in chains, enslaving them, discriminating against them etc. they would treat them kindly. They would restructure their present hellish economic system so that while retaining incentives for individuals to make profits also make sure that all people have some access to economic security (mixed socialist-capitalist economy is the solution).

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.